The Checkdown

by Jamie Bennett

  Chapter 13

  Going out with the Woodsmen Dames was an interesting experience. I was used to being onstage or in a show. This was just like that—every eye was on us, people were taking pictures, waving. Now, they were also sending over rounds of drinks, sending over phone numbers, daring each other to talk to us. It was like going out with Davis (he was a magnet for attention, even doing something boring like pumping gas) but he deflected it, and definitely turned it away from me. The Dames courted it and sucked it up and I was dragged along in their attractive vortex.

  It reminded me of my experiences as a bridesmaid. As I mentioned, I had been in 12 different wedding parties. There were different schools of thought among the brides I had served (and who, by the way, were all my friends): some went with trying to make the bridesmaids ugly in bad dresses and/or weird hair and makeup, so that the focus was on themselves (three times); more commonly, the bride wanted to make the bridesmaids pretty and comfortable because we were her close friends and relatives and she loved us (six times); sometimes the bride just didn’t give a hoot what we wore and let us do what we wanted, good or bad (twice).

  And then there was my fiend Carys, who was in a school of her own, taking a scientific position on bridesmaid attire. She tried to micromanage every single element of our appearances to optimize the bridal party effect. “Studies show that a woman looks better when surrounded by other beautiful women. I want to look good. You need more lipstick,” she had informed me, shortly before we walked down the aisle. At one point I was going to sit down and see if there was a correlation between bride/bridesmaid relationships and divorce rates. It certainly had made a difference in how close of friends I had remained with the various brides, post-wedding.

  During my evening with the Woodsmen Dames, I began to think that Carys was right, and that being with beautiful women made me appear prettier. I had never gotten so much attention in my life as when I was with the cheerleaders at the bar, not even when I was in a high school production of Grease and came out on stage with my poodle skirt tucked up in my underwear in back. I hadn’t been dancing for very long when I realized that there seemed to be more wind on my legs than usual, and made a fast exit. Sadly, the audience had noticed it first.

  “Here.” Rochelle plunked down a small glass with purple liquid in front of me. “We’re doing shots. They were comped.” We glanced at the bartender, who raised a glass of water to us and smiled.

  “Oh, great. Thanks,” I told her.

  They counted one, two, three! On two, I ducked down under the table and poured my glass onto the floor. It was so gross down there, I didn’t think anyone would notice. The Dames loosened up even more after the shots and got a little wilder, and the crowd (mostly, the men) was loving it. That bartender was no dummy.

  Despite the shot, and the feeling like I was part of a performance, which I didn’t really care for, I had fun with the Dames. A while into the evening I checked my phone and saw a message from Davis. “Talk to you later,” he wrote. Yeah, great. I put the phone back into my bag.

  “Hi there.” A man stood in front of me and pointed to my empty shot glass. “Get you another?”

  “No, thank you.” The music changed to a country song and the Dames started squealing and running to the dance floor.

  “Do you want to dance instead?” the man asked.

  Why not? “Sure,” I said. It was just a line dance, after all. And it was so fun! All the cheerleaders were amazing dancers, and they turned the simple steps into a sexy show. I was laughing like crazy while I danced and shaking what I had, too, and the guy who I’d gone out on the floor with clearly loved it. He asked for my number at the end of the song, but once I said no, he moved on to one of the Dames. I wished him luck.

  “Oh my God!” I heard one of the cheerleaders say. “Corinna!”

  “Just look at her. Ugh, she’s huge!” her friend answered.

  I stood on my tiptoes and saw some of the retired Woodsmen Dames come into the bar. Trailing behind them was the woman I now identified as Sam’s better half, Corinna, the lady carrying his child. And she was seriously carrying his child. She looked about ready to pop.

  The women she came in with sounded squeals of their own and headed out onto the dance floor to join their former squad-mates, but Corinna slowly disappeared into the dark recesses of the bar. I maneuvered my way toward her and located her at a small table, ordering an orange juice.

  “Corinna? Hi, I’m Katie. I’m Nutty,” I explained.

  “What?” Her pretty face crinkled in confusion.

  “I’m Nutty the Chipmunk at the football games. We met a few times at the stadium while you were a cheerleader.”

  “Oh! Yes, I remember you.”

  “Um, can I sit? Are these seats taken?”

  “No,” Corinna sighed. “They’re all empty. Everyone dropped me like a hot potato. They think I look fat and ugly and I’ll drive away the guys.”

  I sat. “That’s not very nice.”

  “It’s true that most men aren’t interested in a pregnant lady,” she confided.

  “Well, yes. But I think you look great.”

  “That’s what Sam says.” She looked up at me fearfully. “Not the Sam you know, a different one.”

  “It’s ok,” I told her. “He mentioned to me that you two are, um, an item. I’m not going to say anything.” Except to my grammy because I told her almost everything.

  Her eyes filled up with tears. “I’m so glad! It’s so hard to hide this from everyone, and pretend I was artificially inseminated.”

  “That’s what you’re telling people?” Oh, Lord. “Why?”

  “I didn’t want people to think I was the kind of woman who got pregnant by mistake!” she retorted.

  “Oh, so this was planned?” It hadn’t sounded that way to me when Sam explained the situation.

  “No, we didn’t plan it. Not at all,” Corinna told me. We looked at each other for a moment.

  “Anyway, it’s nice to see you again,” I said, and started to get up.

  Her hand shot out and grabbed my wrist. “Wait. What else did Sam say about me?”

  “Uh, he said…” I thought back. I didn’t want to mention the comments about rabbits. “He said you’re a sweet girl. That you guys are going to move in together.”

  “Oh, no,” she told me. “Not until we get married. I don’t believe in making a commitment like living together without a ring on my finger.”

  I looked at her distended stomach, which seemed to be a lot of commitment to me, and nodded slowly. “Sure.”

  We talked for almost an hour. Sam was right: she was a sweet girl. Very, very naïve, and pretty kooky, but sweet. She really loved Sam, which she told me a few times. A few hundred times.

  “I just love him so much. I know it was wrong, with him having a common-law wife and all, but I think our relationship was fated. In the stars!” Corinna looked at me with big eyes.

  “Uh huh.” She probably didn’t want to hear my opinion on whether or not the stars had guided Sam to cheat on Dotty. I felt was driven by anatomical, rather than astrological, reasons.

  Corinna reached behind herself and massaged her back, wincing.

  “Are you ok?” I asked quickly.

  “I’m fine. I’ve been feeling strange today. I’m not sure what it is.”

  I studied her closely. “Are you all set for the baby? You have everything you need?”

  “I think Sam and I will get a nursery together when we get our apartment. After we get married.”

  I looked at her stomach again. “How far along are you?” I asked.

  She rubbed a hand across her belly, which seemed to suddenly get hard under her tight shirt. Corinna breathed out and closed her eyes for a second. “I’m at thirty-nine weeks. That felt weird.”

  My eyes widened. “So you’re due any day now.”

  “Soon,” she said, and yawned. “I think I need to go home. My back is killing me.”

  “I’ll drive you
,” I told her. We walked very, very slowly to my car, stopping every now and then to rest. It had started to rain and was coming down hard, and I held my coat over Corinna’s head. Wind whipped as I helped her into the house she shared with the other retired Woodsmen Dames. Then I yanked out my phone and called Sam.

  “Get down to Corinna’s, right now,” I told him.

  “What? Is it the baby?” he yelled, panicked.

  “Don’t freak out, but I think she’s having contractions. She’s acting just like my friend Jen did when she went into labor. I’m going back in there with her but you better get here, now!”

  He did, in about five minutes. I was holding Corinna’s hand.

  “What the fuck are you doing, Katie?” he hollered at me. “She needs an ambulance!”

  “Hi, Sam,” Corinna told him, smiling adoringly at him.

  He dropped to his knees and put his hands on her stomach. “Is this it? Are you having the baby, Rinna?”

  I drove them to the hospital a few hours later when the contractions got closer, since Sam was in no condition to do it. Not because of alcohol this time, but due to his nerves. He was freaking out so much I thought I would have to slap him. I wanted to anyway, so it would have worked out for me. I couldn’t believe the situation he had gotten himself into, having a baby with nothing prepared, and only a trailer in the woods to bring it home to. Corinna was complicit in this disaster, but you couldn’t get mad at a woman in labor, so I saved it for Sam.

  It was getting to be morning when I left the hospital, steering through the driving rain, to go over to my friend Jen’s house. She gave me a bag of clean, newborn-sized hand-me-downs, which I told her I would explain about later. I dropped it off at the hospital, where they were still awaiting the arrival of baby Hank the Hunter, and headed straight over to Davis’ house.

  I stumbled into the kitchen, practically asleep on my feet. It had been a long time since I’d pulled an all-nighter.

  Davis stared at me. “Where have you been?” he demanded. “What happened to you?”

  “It’s such a long story.” I paused to yawn hugely. “Let’s go to your appointment.”

  “They cancelled,” he told me. “The power’s out in the building from the storm.”

  “Oh.” I put my head down on the countertop, resting my cheek on the cool marble. “Hank is having a baby. I mean, Sam’s girlfriend is having a baby. They’re at the hospital right now. She went into labor last night.”

  “And how did that involve you?” he asked, frowning.

  “They happened to be lucky that I was there. It was not as lucky for me.”

  Davis walked around the kitchen island and pulled me upright. “Come on.” I followed him, stumbling a little, back to his bedroom. “Sleep,” he directed me, and pointed to the bed.

  I didn’t need to be told twice. “Wake me up in a few hours,” I mumbled. “I just need to close my eyes.”

  “Sure.” The mattress sank down as he sat his big body on the edge of the bed. I turned on my side and curled up around the hand he put out to hold mine.

  “Why didn’t you wait for me at the stadium?” I murmured.

  “We’ll talk about it when you wake up.” He used his other hand to brush the hair away from my face. Funny that someone so big and strong could be so gentle.

  I woke up a little disoriented. Oh, right. I was at Davis’ house. The baby! I grabbed my phone off the bedside table and opened it to a picture of a tiny, red, squished-up face looking out at me. Sam and Corinna’s baby daughter had arrived. And they had named her Ideswif. “Corinna’s mom’s name,” Sam explained under the photo. I wrote back that she was beautiful and that the name was so unusual. She would never have the issue of another Ideswif in her class. I myself had been Katie B for a number of years due to a high prevalence of Catherines and Katherines in my elementary school and had found it extremely annoying.

  Davis had let me sleep away most of the day. I adjusted my ponytail and shivered—we had gone from air-conditioning to needing the heat almost overnight. I took one of Davis’ huge shirts off the end of the bed and buttoned it up over my t-shirt and leggings, then wandered out into the hall. “I thought you were going to wake me up,” I called, as I walked into the kitchen. “I’m starving. I worked up such an appetite last night! And I’m sore, too…”

  I froze. There were 12 pairs of eyes staring at me. Davis had invited the starting defensive players over and they were meeting with him in the family room.

  “Katie.” Davis moved quickly over to me. I put my hands over my face and started to back up blindly. His arm went around me and we walked out, towards the bedroom. I got into the bed and pulled the covers over my head.

  “I’ll never be able to go back to the stadium. Not ever.” My voice was muffled as I hid my face.

  “They don’t care,” Davis said. His voice sounded funny too, so I peeked out from under the duvet and stared at him. He was trying not to laugh.

  “I was talking about being hungry and sore because I danced so much! And I was up so late! It sounded like…”

  “Makes me look good,” he said, and now he was really laughing.

  “I have to go home. I’ll crawl out the window,” I said. “I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life.”

  “No, no. It’s not that bad. They probably didn’t see your face.”

  “Really?” I looked up at him. “No, you’re a terrible liar.”

  “I’ll tell them that if they ever mention it, to you or anyone else, I’ll kick the living shit out of them.”

  “Really?” I said again. He looked so cute, I sat up and hugged him. “Ok, then, maybe I won’t die of shame. Thanks for threatening people for me.”

  “Anytime, chipmunk.” He kissed my head and I cuddled up closer.

  Davis went back to his meeting, and I sent the picture of little Ideswif to my grandma. She loved looking at baby pictures and I was sure she could come up with an acceptable nickname, too.

  “It was crazy,” I explained to Davis over dinner at his house. He had helped me cook, in his own way. He was a precision chopper of vegetables. They were beautiful and exactly even, but took a very long time to produce. “I was sitting talking to Corinna and she was in labor but didn’t realize it.”

  “How did you know?” he asked me, reaching for another roll. I had baked a little.

  I shrugged. “A lot of my friends have had babies. Lindy and I went with our friend Jen to the hospital because her husband was deployed. The way Corinna was acting just felt familiar.” I took a big bite, and chewed, my starvation decreasing. “Hey, enlighten me, please, about why you weren’t at the stadium waiting for me after the game.”

  Davis put down his fork and leaned back. I had a good idea that something bad was coming.

  “It turns out that you and I are not supposed to be together.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Because of my contract. But we’re not, really…”

  He looked at me. “Aren’t we?”

  I blushed. I was. I was really. “What happened?”

  “After I saw you to wish you luck before the game, I had to talk to some people to make it ok. I didn’t think we should be meeting up with each other right after that, so I left with the coaches and the GM to have dinner and talk things out.” He started to eat again, as if the conversation was over.

  “No, Davis, hang on. You have to give me more than that. If they think—if they know, that I’m violating my contract, I could get fired!” My heart rate picked up. “Oh, shit.”

  But he was shaking his head. “You aren’t getting fired.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I let them know that if you got fired because of what we have going on, it would be a problem for me. I may not be playing, but it turns out I have some clout, still.”

  “What did you tell them?” I asked him.

  “Where Nutty goes, I go.”

  I laughed hesitantly. “You didn’t really say you would leave if I got fired.”r />
  “They didn’t know if I was kidding either.”

  “Davis! That’s crazy!”

  He shrugged. “They said they’re not interested. As long as we’re not making noise, they’re not going to act on any fraternization clauses in your contract.”

  “Well, thank you. Thank you for saving my job.”

  “They weren’t going to fire you, anyway. They’re all afraid with the Trish stuff. Chicken shits,” he scoffed.

  “What do you mean, ‘the Trish stuff?’” I asked.

  “Rochelle had already told them that Trish was difficult to work for.”

  “Wow, Rochelle was the one who ratted out Trish. I always thought they were thick as thieves,” I wondered.

  “Then I had the issue with her about you, so Trish is on a short leash. They don’t want you or Sam or any of the Dames to file a lawsuit over workplace harassment or something.”

  I put down my glass. “You told them about what Trish said to me? That’s why she apologized?”

  Davis stared at me. “I told you, no one is going to talk to you like that. I went and told Trish to clean it up and to leave you alone or deal with me. Then I told the GM what I had said so there wouldn’t be any confusion.”

  “To her face? You told her, to her face, to clean it up? To leave me alone?” I asked, somewhat horrified.

  “Of course, to her face. Was I going to write an anonymous letter?”

  Well, I had been considering it, myself. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “Yes, I did. She’s a bad coach. I’ve had plenty in my career, and I know how it is to try to deal with people like her. They think they’re getting the best out of you by screaming and bitching, but it doesn’t work in the end. It wasn’t working for you.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “Thanks for standing up for me.”

  “Quid pro quo.”

  Oh. He was trying to balance out our relationship, such as it was.

  “I mean, I know you have my back. I’ve got yours,” Davis told me. “Stop frowning and thinking something else.”